Estima, Gracies detail Diaz's expo no-show, say blame widespread

Although they can’t say for certain why Nick Diaz no-showed the 2012 World Jiu-Jitsu Expo, Braulio Estima and Renzo Gracie can agree there were serious problems behind the scenes at the event.

In a pair of interviews today with MMAjunkie.com Radio (www.mmajunkie.com/radio), Estima and Gracie detailed their roles at the Expo, which took place this past Saturday in Long Beach, Calif.

Both said miscommunications in the lead-up to a superfight between Estima and Diaz likely contributed to the unfortunate ending, which came when a weight dispute scrapped the bout.

But the jiu-jitsu “superfight” shouldn’t have happened in the first place, said Gracie.

“This was a matchup that I didn’t want from the beginning, and they did it,” he said. “Because Nick Diaz has unbelievable jiu-jitsu. But to match him against a guy like Braulio, it’s uneven.

“If it was an MMA fight, it’s a different ballgame. But it’s not an MMA fight.”

And Saturday night, it wasn’t a grappling match, either. Estima arrived on the mat to find Diaz and his manager Cesar Gracie – Renzo Gracie’s cousin – absent. A member of the Diaz camp was unable to find the pair, so Estima took Diaz to task before the audience and said he would fight the UFC welterweight in MMA.

By then, Diaz was long gone, Cesar Gracie today told MMAjunkie.com. He had left Friday night when Estima’s weight first came into focus. Gracie said Diaz, who’s now back in his hometown of Stockton, Calif., donated his base pay for the event this morning to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital.

UFC president Dana White, who once booted Diaz from a title fight Georges St-Pierre when he no-showed press conferences in support of UFC 137, did an online version of a shrug when news of the no-show caught up to him on Twitter.

“No, not shocked and I’m surprised u people are!” White wrote. “He no showed a Las Vegas press conf to a fight he was gonna make HUGE $ and title.”
To cut or not to cut?

Estima arrived in Long Beach on Thursday following a vacation in Thailand and quick jaunt to his adopted home in the U.K. for two days of filming on a reality show. He said there was a verbal agreement that he had to weigh 180 pounds on Friday or 185 on event day, but said the Expo’s promoter did not have a clear plan for weigh-in schedule.

On Friday night, Estima said he still hadn’t heard anything about when he was supposed to weigh in and at what weight, so he called the promoter as he sat down to sushi at a local restaurant. The promoter, in turn, called Cesar Gracie, whose team had a presence at the event.

“‘Cesar told you that you need to weigh 180 (pounds) tomorrow,'” Estima said of his next conversation with the promoter. “I said, ‘Hold on. The verbal agreement was 180 on Friday, or 185 on Saturday. It was supposed to be one or the other.'”

Cesar Gracie admitted the agreed-upon weight changed multiple times in the lead-up to the event. He declined to further discuss details of the tournament and said a statement from his camp is forthcoming.

Still, Estima agreed to cut to 180 pounds. He soon heard via Twitter that he had missed weight, which wasn’t accurate in his mind because the weigh-in had been agreed for 10 a.m. on Saturday morning. He wasn’t sure whether Diaz’s manager was behind the messages, but proceeded nonetheless.

Estima said he made 180 pounds on Saturday morning in the presence of a Cesar Gracie black belt Lana Stefanic and documented the entire process with video. He then texted Gracie with confirmation of his weight and asked the manager if he could check Diaz’s weight.

Gracie then informed him that the promoter had told Diaz he could eat on Friday night. Estima asked if he could meet the fighter to promote the match, which was reportedly for charity. He was informed Diaz wasn’t available.

“That was the level of how things were going,” Estima said.

For his part, Renzo Gracie said the weigh-ins should have been done on Friday.

“That’s how all the competitions are,” he said. “I think it was the fact that I let a guy handle this that he wasn’t prepared. He’s not used to the fighting world. He’s a guy who makes shirts, who makes expos. He was very efficient on that. But on everything else, he lacked knowledge.”

Yet Estima completely expected Diaz to show up Saturday evening. A run-in with Cesar Gracie beforehand gave him the impression that the match was still a go, and when he walked out on the mats, he expected to see the controversial and popular fighter from Stockton.

Instead, he saw empty space.

Renzo Gracie said he plans to talk with the promoter soon to find out exactly what went wrong over the weekend. But he noted that Cesar Gracie had a role in the expo that may have exceeded that of a mere fighter rep.

“For Cesar to bring in his camp, he received a big percentage of the expo,” Renzo Gracie said.

However, the MMA legend specifically points to the conversation between Estima, the promoter and Cesar Gracie as the root of the problem.

“You don’t call a guy’s room to tell that [the opponent] is going to be 10 pounds overweight at midnight on the day previous to his fight,” said Renzo Gracie. “There’s a psychological effect in there.

“Nick Diaz is a guy that was already giving up too much to fight Braulio, and the next thing you see, 10 pounds heavier. And the other one is so ignorant that he passes that information without even thinking how much damage he can deliver, and it ended up being that.”

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